Witnesses in Ethiopia Say Evidence Of Mass Killing Being Burned

The remains of hundreds of people are being deliberately destroyed in an organised campaign to dispose of evidence of ethnic cleansing in the west of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, according to interviews with 15 eyewitnesses.

The allegations follow multiple reports of the targeting of the Tigrayan population during the civil war.

They also come in advance of the possible deployment of a UN independent investigation team which will be led by former International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.

People belonging to security forces from the neighbouring Amhara region, which are occupying western Tigray, have been identified as digging up fresh mass graves, exhuming hundreds of bodies, burning them and then transporting what remains out of the region, the eyewitnesses said in telephone interviews.

The authorities have acknowledged that graves have been dug up but say that they show evidence that Tigrayan forces had been carrying out its own campaign of ethnically motivated killing in recent decades. Researchers from Gondar University have also been uncovering mass grave sites that they have linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

All sides in the on-going civil war have been accused of carrying out mass killings.

But in a recent report, rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused Amhara officials and security forces of being behind a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Tigrayans in the area.

The fighting, which began in November 2020, followed a dispute between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s federal government and the TPLF, Tigray’s dominant political party.